If your performance doesn't match your conceptual appreciation, in spite of assiduous effort, you may find this outline focusing your energy in a way that allows you to have the command you've been looking for. Some of us who have come to this divide realize how frustrating it is to keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. With this material, you will be introduced to a different way of training your ear. This outline produces an arpeggiotic device, which we will call: tablature. The effectiveness of this observation lies, not in performance, but in a systematic and sensible practice of root fingerings and adherence to the principle that "every finger has a fret." The result is the reliance on your ear for performance.

Jazz musicians excel in the art of exploring the arpeggio. Because the notes of the arpeggio are played incrementally, it can have incredibly diverse acoustical references. It is, in fact, the facility one has with the arpeggio that that lays the groundwork for improvisation. The arpeggio is the touchstone for all tablature. One's depth of concept and spontaneity will flow from having facility with the arpeggio. It's the truth behind the saying: "he plays well because of his classical training." The classics can be measured with the facility using the arpeggio. Which came first: the classic or the arpeggio? The arpeggio came first, of course. Master the arpeggio and you will master technique. It is not critical to say that scales and reading are useless in mastering the art of improvisational playing but it is necessary to inspire and focus on the facility of an ear trained performance.


I believe with each generation there are conceptual observations critical to the execution of newer ideas in performance. The tradition of a memorized bag of tricks is the main tool of players who are frozen in time because they're not on to a few basic concepts cognitive to performance. Most who are from this ilk know there is something missing from their effort, either from themselves or from what they've been told, even from the big time players.

If you can hear a jazz figure or a bee bop line over a well-established melody, you probably are a candidate for exploring the arpeggio. You may have aged, like most of us in this profession, to realize that the "hunt and peck, now you make it now you don't" method of memorization and chord patterns is pretty much a dead end for really creative musicology. The truth behind the absence of the unexplained, yet explainable concepts that are the foundations for good playing may lie in the fact that, perhaps only a few have become proficient in the performance as well as the ability to communicate the process. A few of my favorite players have come up short in interviews when it came to the "how-tos" of the instrument. Well, perhaps they are content not to pass it on or they want phenomenon to add mystique to their talent. At any rate, the fact remains that these simple elements are conspicuously absent from the broad range of upstarts as well as experienced players in this business.

The degree of success with this approach will depend on the student's maturity and a supreme confidence in this basic innovative technique. A novice to most things will exaggerate and probe for flaws, finding the remotest of contradictions while sinking into a quagmire of confusion. You'll be happy to know that there is only one thing that will prove an innovative, spontaneous improvisational performance and that is a well-trained ear. Not many will mock this basic truth. However, most will resort to the devices which tend to overrule good acoustical training; string bending, scales, fancy picking, memorizing lines, etc.

I will make only this one jealous statement and then be done with references to other musicians who have dedicated their lives to this fine art: Some may resent this process being talked about being talked about as unique. But the process is designed to expose some pretty widespread bad advice to encourage talented players to master the techniques and maybe reform some of the tidal wave of mediocrity and incompetence that dominates the main stream.

Everything I have learned has come directly from the influence and character given me from three of the greatest guitar players and music innovators of this century: Dennis Sandoli, who I owe for the success of my family and the material which has lead to these observations, Joe Federico, the master of the techniques taught by Sandoli and who made them come alive with graciousness and humility and finally Joe Sgro, a Philadelphia legend, who made but one simple remark to me which melted a long-time musical freeze These men will continue to dominate the musical world in which I live.

The following are things a student should consider prior to undertaking the study of internalizing Tablature.

Nothing replaces the evolution of time in the conceptual process. However, internalizing tablature will ensure that time is not wasted on the endless dabbling with licks and unstable fingerings. The student must commit to four months of rigorous information gathering: Every finger has a fret (God made the hand to configure in this ingenious pattern.) The four-string chord: The Major Dominant Minor Diminished Augmented whole tone and Color Chords Basic modality… one is major and one is minor, etc. The student becomes conceptually aware early on. However, the internalizing process will take as long as it takes.

Musical maturity will occur on a faster track if the performance comes from a trained ear. Not memorized but as the actual tool to lay down what occurs musically in your mind. The fraternity of players who are well along in this process may not have arrived at this confidence from the tablature method. But, they will tell you (however awkwardly and possibly with a shrug) that they do not know how they play. "It just happens." Well, you can be sure their proficiency comes from a clear mind and an ear that's directly riveted to their chops and the incidence of luck. This process may happen by chance but the odds against it are remote - very remote!


The All-Encompassing truth:

To be a jazz player, it's not what you play, but how you arrive at what you play. There are countless players who memorize a bag of jazz licks and some percussive techniques but they are played from memory. This isn't what the jazz player does. The jazz player has conceptualized the instrument and coupled it with an innate talent for hearing the typical, as well as the progressive, resolutions. Anyone, even the beginner, soon realizes that his performance depends on how well he can internally visualize tablature and the relationship between chords. Once this strong internal vision is in place, than the acoustical and harmonic ideas that make up your particular talent can flow. Unless this internalizing takes place, there is no performance… no matter how talented you are.

Take a moment to examine the ones who are mastering the art of improvisation. These people are not rocket scientists. How do they achieve this ability? The following articles will discuss the system which has only been available to the closed fraternity of top-grade performers.

You must develop conceptual forms of reference on the fret board. No matter where you are, can you see everything else from that point? Players do not intellectualize during a performance! Good playing is done by ear. The jazzist is particularly interested in this truth because he must be able to play what he hears spontaneously. On the piano, these points of reference are apparent just by the linear sequence of the keys. Placing the steps in a chord becomes straightforward. On other instruments, this observation becomes more obscure.

The guitarist must train himself to visualize the four-note chord combinations that are the "parent" even to the creation of the instrument. The all-encompassing conceptual goal for the guitarist is to be able to visualize the FOUR NOTE chord and arpeggio as one great big pattern over the entire fret board. There are six points of origin for each chord and arpegio. Change the mode as you will but there are only six. ONE ON EACH STRING. Unless you achieve this observation and internalize it, you will remain in the player slump forever.

The full internalized vision of the chord is twelve frets long.

There are five places along this twelve-fret pattern where the chord and the arpeggio has its root both on the lower fret and the higher fret. (the front and back of the chord.) ie C7 with the root at the first and the third fret. The chord is played between the roots. This can be called a position. Each of these positions is directly in front and behind the next. The fingerings remain constant while the pattern as a whole moves. This is also true for the arpeggio. If one recognizes this basic truth about the guitar, he will be motivated to continue to play them Hard; as it is, the repetition of these concepts that reveals the secrets of improvisation. This concept can be revealed by studying the four note chord and string combinations that accompany this article. Primer: The power of concept. Appendix "a" Page 16-19 The diminished chord fingering; root for all chords, arpeggiotic intervals, Finding Chords everywhere. Double octave tetra chord linking